Thanks Dettes! We did Bar Harbor for our "babymoon" pre-DD1 and did very much love it. We've actually already booked a summer trip next year to Gatlinburg for my parents' 40th anniversary celebration (23 of us in one huge house, should be interesting!) so that covers a mountain/hiking trip. Since DD1 will start kinder in the fall of 2012, we want to get one more family trip in where we don't have to worry about school times. And I am SOOO sick of winters that I want to take a warm trip mid winter! Not to mention our anniversary is March 2, so ideally, we'll go that week.
The National looks cool but they don't have availability online either. Boo.
Great links on here everyone!!! Most of these places I hadn't heard of before and have them bookmarked for future reference. It was so lovely fantasizing about a Royal Villa at the Half Moon resort!
Boiler - I actually thought the Hawks Cay resort was nice because of the beach rental aspect. Instead of just staying in a hotel room or suite, you get more of a condo aspect. I thought the Marina village was a nice location there. Curtain Bluff sure has a lot of activites too. Seems like you do get a lot for the price.
I know Peachy! I so want to do Curtain Bluff but DH is just not being flexible. Though maybe he will if I can't get things figured out in Miami. All of our vacations lately have been condo/house rentals and while that does work nice for the family, I end up making breakfast, cleaning up breakfast, cleaning up beds, making lunch, etc etc etc. I have no problem doing that on most of our vacations but for our anniversary trip, I don't want to have to lift a finger doing any sort of housework or kitchen work.
On the plus side, I have a coworker friend in Miami who is checking on corporate rates for us at hotels and he offered to let us drop the kids at his house one evening if DH and I wanted a date night (or to leave them with his regular sitter if we wanted to go out clubbing with him and his wife). There is certainly a benefit to that!
Ok, so it's me again. I cannot get things to work with Miami & the Keys that time of year. Hotels are triple what they are normally, can't use miles on the plane tix, etc.
So now we're thinking of heading west. What I can make work is to fly in and out of San Fransisco and head down to Carmel. I love SF and spent a few days in Carmel for work when I was pg with DD, so I'm getting more excited about this. The weather will be cooler, 50-60s but we're fine with that. So, I'm looking at this place to stay
I did not read through the whole thread but noticed ansechastinet on your list. While it is gorgeous and has great snorkling we went there on our honeymoon and I would not consider it child friendly. I do not believe there was a pool and there were not many on site activities. Only one restaurant if I remember correctly. Great place to be alone, sit on beach, drink cocktails and indulge in spa treatments and snorkle right off the beach.
I have friends who tell us we must take our child to Costa Rica before we got to Disney because it is more magical when they are young.
Last bump for me for this thread. After months of see sawing, we just plain scrapped the idea of a 10 year anniversary trip with kids. Trying to come up with a fantastic, memorable, special vacation with 2 littles (mostly DD2) was just leading us to places we didn't really want to go and to prices we weren't willing to spend for what they provided.
So we moved the dates off our anniversary and just planned a regular family vacation that I think we'll all enjoy more than any of the options I previously looked at due to our personal likes and the ages of our kids. As a plus, DH and I are also going to do a nice weekend away for our anniversary sans kids.
I think we will "just" be doing Hilton Head with the kids for a week. We will have a 6 month old, a 2 year old, and a 5 year old, at that point. HHI is good since it is close, we can get a nice large house, and it is QUIET, which is important with very little ones, I think. I hate going away and then stressing over all the noise in a hotel when they are asleep. We will probably just go all out on a big oceanfront house. Then on our actual anniversary we can do a nice evening out (we will bring my mom and step-dad). I guess we will go away alone for our 11th anniversary!
Once I ditched the whole anniversary trip yesterday, it took me less than an hour to plan and book a regular vacation LOL. See, the stress was too much and obviously we were not excited about what we were planning. Anyhow, DH was going to palm springs for work for 3 days, so I just tacked 6 more days on to his work trip. We should have great weather for hiking all the trails and plenty of pool time for the kids. I got a 3 bedroom villa associated with Rancho Las Palmas, so we can use their whole kid friendly facility.
To make it even better, our best friends from Texas live about 3 hours from there, so they're coming up to join us for 2 days.
Rosa, you guys love HHI and a great house with private pool will give you plenty of fun with 3 kids!
Last edited by boilermaker; 01-06-2012 at 12:48 PM.
Boiler: that sounds like a great trip - fun and different. I do feel like, for us, we can't go wrong with a house in Sea Pines. It has everything I love - beach, activities, good dining, nice houses to choose from. Oh, and with 3 little kids the short drive is pretty nice! Can't wait to hear more about your trip!
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Originally Posted by laura
